One person was taken into custody, then released, as authorities tried to chase down possible leads for a key suspect on the run: a man whose bomb failed to explode at Brussels Airport.
But the brothers — Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, both Belgians with criminal records — were identified by authorities as suspected of being among the three suicide bombers who attacked the Brussels metro and airport on Tuesday, claiming at least 31 lives and injuring 270 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
The pair also opened links to last year’s Paris massacres. Authorities believe both had connections to Salah Abdeslam, who helped carry out the bloody siege in November and was apprehended last week by Belgian authorities.
The probes increasingly suggest a web that draws together the Paris plot — hatched mostly in Brussels — and Tuesday’s blasts that struck in the shadows of offices directing the Western alliance NATO and the European Union.
As part of the manhunt and investigations, security officials found a will in a trash can at the apartment of Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 29, the elder brother. It read: “I would rather die than end up in a cell.”
He is suspected of perpetrating a suicide attack at the airport. The younger brother was identified by his fingerprints in the metro attack, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said.
Officials also found a vast cache of bomb-making materials in Ibrahim el-Bakraoui’s apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels: 33 pounds of TATP explosives, nearly 40 gallons of acetone, detonators and a suitcase full of nails, the prosecutor said.
One of the brothers, said a Belgian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity had used a false name to rent an apartment in Forest neighborhood of Brussels that was raided on March 15. Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found there, providing the vital clue that helped lead to his arrest.
Belgian media initially reported that a suspect arrested Wednesday was 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui, whom European security officials have described as a suspected Islamic State bombmaker. But those reports were later retracted, and Van Leeuw said Laachraoui was still being sought.
Laachraoui remained a target of the manhunt, however, and his DNA was found on at least one bomb used in the Paris attacks.
In further signs of jitters across Belgium, sports officials called off a soccer match between Belgium and Portugal scheduled for Tuesday in Brussels “because of security concerns.” Brussels Airport will remain closed at least through Thursday, officials said.
Laachraoui, a Belgian who was born in Morocco and raised in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, is believed to have trained in Syria and then returned to Europe.
His DNA was found on one of the explosive belts from November’s Paris attacks, and he is thought to have traveled at one point with Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving suspect believed to have played a direct role in the Paris massacre. Abdeslam was captured Friday in a raid on an apartment building in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels.
Tuesday’s mass killings added Brussels to a somber list of European capitals that have been struck in the past year by deadly attacks either perpetrated or inspired by the Islamic State, including Paris and Copenhagen.